SEO audits in London

Crawl and indexing report

A full crawl of the site reconciled with Search Console: what Google has indexed, what it should have, what is duplicated, orphaned, redirected or blocked, and why.

Technical findings

Speed and Core Web Vitals from field data, mobile rendering, canonicals, structured data, internal linking, redirects, hreflang, JavaScript rendering and server behaviour, each confirmed by hand with a screenshot.

Content audit

Every indexable page assessed against the search it should serve: keep, improve, merge, redirect or remove, with the gaps against the competitors who outrank you.

Link profile review

Where your links come from, which are relevant, which are risky, and how the profile compares with the three sites above you for your main searches.

Local and Business Profile check

For businesses serving London: categories, services, photos, reviews and reply rate on your Google Business Profile, citation consistency and location page quality.

AI search baseline

How Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Gemini currently describe your business and your competitors for your main searches, recorded with dates so it can be tracked.

Prioritised fix list

Every finding scored for impact and effort and ordered into a plan: what to do this month, this quarter and later, written so a developer can pick it up without us.

Walkthrough and follow-up

A recorded walkthrough by the person who wrote the audit, a live session with your team, and thirty days of questions answered by email.

How we do it

Tools find candidates; a person confirms findings

Automated crawlers are good at listing everything that might be wrong and bad at knowing what matters. We run them, then a named specialist confirms each finding by hand: opening the page, checking the rendered source, reading the Search Console report, taking the screenshot. The audit contains only what we have seen. A list of four hundred "errors" exported from a tool is not an audit; it is a reason the last one you bought sat in a drawer.

Technical: how the site is built and served

We reconcile the crawl against Search Console so you know exactly which pages Google has indexed and which it has not, and why. We check canonicals, redirects, pagination, parameters, hreflang, structured data, robots rules and the XML sitemap. We measure speed with Core Web Vitals field data for the templates that matter, test mobile rendering, and look at how JavaScript affects what Google can see. Where the site is on Shopify or WordPress we bring in the platform-specific checks from our Shopify and WordPress work.

Content: does the site have a page for the search?

Every indexable page is assessed against the search it should serve. Pages are marked keep, improve, merge, redirect or remove. We map the searches that matter for your business in London against the pages you have and the pages the top three competitors have, which gives you the gap list that becomes next year’s content plan. Thin pages, cannibalising pages (two pages competing for the same search) and pages that rank for the wrong thing are called out with the evidence.

Links: where authority comes from and where risk sits

We review the link profile for relevance, quality and risk, compare it with the sites above you, and flag anything that looks bought or automated, including the leftovers of a previous agency’s link packages. If disavowal is warranted we say so, and if it is not we say that too; most sites do not need one.

Local: the profile, the citations, the location pages

For a business that serves London customers in person, the Google Business Profile and the location pages are examined as carefully as the website: categories, services, photos, posts, review count and reply rate, citation consistency across the directories that matter, and whether the location pages are genuine pages or a borough name swapped into a template. Where the business has several sites across London, each is reviewed and compared.

AI search: how you are described today

We record how Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Gemini describe your business and your competitors for your main searches, with screenshots and dates, so that you have a baseline to track against. We do not claim to control what these systems say; the work that influences them is the same work that earns rankings, and the audit shows where that work is missing. Read more in the guide to AI search and GEO.

Priorities, not a list

Every finding is scored for impact and effort and sorted into this month, this quarter and later. The fix list is written so that a developer who has never spoken to us can pick it up and act. It names the pages, the templates, the exact change and how to check it worked. You can hand it to your own team, to another agency, or to us.

What changes, and when

An audit changes nothing on its own; it tells you what to change and in which order. Once the fixes are made, technical changes are usually re-crawled within two to eight weeks. Local search changes often show within one to three months. Competitive London head terms usually take six to twelve months. These are typical ranges from our own work, not a promise for your site. The turnaround for the audit itself depends on the size of the site and is agreed in writing before we start, so you know the delivery date before you pay.

What you will hold on delivery: a written document your board can read and your developer can act on, a recorded walkthrough, a live session, and a baseline against which the next twelve months can be measured. What we will not provide: a guarantee about what the fixes will achieve. Google says nobody can guarantee a ranking and our code of ethics says the same.

How it is measured

The audit sets the baseline: indexed pages against pages that should be indexed, impressions and clicks by page from Search Console, enquiries or revenue from organic traffic in GA4, Core Web Vitals field data by template, and the AI search descriptions recorded with dates. If you then work with us, every monthly report compares against that baseline. If you work with someone else, the baseline is still yours; the accounts are in your name and the document is yours to share. For how reporting should look after an audit, read what to expect from SEO reporting.

On proof: we have not published a standalone audit as a case study, because an audit’s results belong to whatever is done with it. The case shown on this page, Leam Taxis, is the closest published example of what a search map and a prioritised fix list lead to when they are acted on: a local business built around the handful of searches that pay. Its figures are the client’s own, with the sources named on the card.

What it costs to find out

If you are not sure whether you need a full audit, start with the free one. The free SEO audit is a shorter written review by an SEO specialist, delivered within two working days: where the site shows up today for the five searches that matter most, the technical blockers we can see from outside, the content gaps against the two sites that outrank you, and the three fixes that matter most. It ends with an honest paragraph on fit, including, where it is true, that you do not need the full audit. A full audit is quoted in writing against an agreed scope; pricing for ongoing work is on the pricing page.

Get your free SEO auditSend your web address and an SEO specialist reviews the site by hand within two working days. Three fields, no call required, no automated score.

Common mistakes we see in London SEO audits

• A crawler export with a logo on it: hundreds of "issues" with no judgement about which matter and no evidence that anyone looked at the pages.
• Lab speed scores from a desktop in a data centre, presented as the experience of a customer on a phone on the Northern line.
• No reconciliation with Search Console, so the audit does not know what Google has actually indexed.
• Content judged by word count rather than by whether a page answers the search it should rank for.
• A link section that counts links and ignores whether any of them are relevant to a London business in your sector.
• The Business Profile and location pages left out entirely, for a business whose customers find it on a map.
• A fix list with no priorities, no owner and no way to check that a fix worked.
• An audit used as a sales document: every finding points to a retainer, and nothing is written so that you could act on it alone.

How it fits with other services

An audit is where most of our engagements begin, and it stands alone if that is all you need. If the findings point to the build, technical SEO makes the fixes. If they point to the pages, SEO content writes them. If a redesign or platform move is coming, the audit feeds straight into SEO migration planning; the redesign checklist covers what is at stake. Multi-site groups and larger organisations usually continue into enterprise SEO, and an ongoing SEO retainer includes a re-audit every quarter so the picture never goes stale. Owners who want to understand the technical side first can read the technical SEO checklist and the guide to Google penalties and recovery.